About Guides
Welcome to our Guides section—your go-to resource for structured information, practical instructions, and expert recommendations on key aspects of community schools. Whether you’re looking to deepen your knowledge or take actionable steps, these guides are designed to support your journey every step of the way.
Principal Guidebook
What does it mean to be a Principal at a Community School? The Principal Guidebook: For California Community Schools offers a practical overview of the leadership vision and core responsibilities associated with leading a Community School. Grounded in the California Community Schools framework, the guide highlights how principals play a critical role in advancing shared leadership, strengthening partnerships, and aligning school improvement efforts with the community’s needs and assets. It emphasizes a shift from traditional top-down leadership toward collaborative leadership with educators, families, students, and community partners. The guide breaks down the five capacity-building strategies for school leaders. It also provides reflective questions and leadership practices that help principals integrate whole-child supports with strong instructional leadership. Designed as a quick reference tool, the document includes links to video interviews with principals and an appendix full of useful resources.
Los Cuatros Pilares Escuelas Comunitarias
Spanish-language resource that explains the four pillars to those new to understanding the Community Schools strategy.
Recurso en español que explica los cuatro pilares a quienes son nuevos en la comprensión de la estrategia de Escuelas Comunitarias.
Estructura: Fundamentos Para la Transformación de Escuelas Comunitarias
This Spanish-language resource summarizes the foundational elements of the community schools strategy.
Este recurso en español resume los elementos fundamentales de la estrategia de las escuelas comunitarias.
Spanish Community Schools Presentation
This Spanish-language presentation provides an introduction to the community schools strategy and highlights the transformative mindset, values, and practices that strengthen student success and community well-being. Participants are introduced to the foundational principles of community schools, including relationship-centered leadership, authentic family and community partnerships, inclusive decision-making, positive school climate, comprehensive student supports, and high-quality teaching and learning. This resource is designed to support educators, school staff, families, and community partners in building a shared understanding of the community schools approach and advancing equitable, collaborative practices.
Esta presentación en español ofrece una introducción a la estrategia de escuelas comunitarias y destaca la mentalidad transformadora, los valores y las prácticas que fortalecen el éxito estudiantil y el bienestar de la comunidad. Se presenta a los participantes los principios fundamentales de las escuelas comunitarias, incluidos el liderazgo centrado en las relaciones, las alianzas auténticas con las familias y la comunidad, la toma de decisiones inclusiva, un clima escolar positivo, apoyos integrales para los estudiantes y una enseñanza y un aprendizaje de alta calidad. Este recurso está diseñado para apoyar a educadores, personal escolar, familias y socios comunitarios en la construcción de una comprensión compartida del enfoque de las escuelas comunitarias y en el impulso de prácticas equitativas y colaborativas.
CTA Community Schools Overview 1 Pager
This 1 pager provides an overview of the community schools strategy, explaining how community schools foster student success through shared leadership, authentic partnerships, and comprehensive supports that respond to the unique strengths and needs of each local community. The resource highlights the history and growth of California’s community schools movement, summarizes the state’s historic investment in the strategy, and shares research demonstrating positive outcomes for students, families, and schools. Designed for families, educators, and community members, this resource helps build a shared understanding of the community school approach and its transformative impact on public education. Available in Spanish and Vietnamese.
Strengthening Community Connected Classrooms: From Relationships to Rigorous, Relevant Learning
This resource offers users an introduction to Parent Teacher Home Visits, a proven strategy that deepens relationships, transforms mindsets, and offers a rich learning experience for educators seeking to reimagine instruction by centering the voices, cultures, and experiences of students, families, and their communities.
Serving the Whole Person: An Alignment and Coherence Guide for State Education Agencies
This Alignment and Coherence Guide’s central purpose is to help state education agency (SEA) leaders implement conditions for equitable learning and development for students, families, and educators, through their work to improve the alignment and coherence of their whole-person initiatives.
Forum Guide to Data Visualization A Resource for Education Agencies
The purpose of this document is to recommend data visualization practices that will help education agencies communicate data meaning in visual formats that are accessible, accurate, and actionable for a wide range of education partners.
National School Reform Faculty: Data Analysis Protocol
Discussions around data can make people feel “on the spot” or exposed, either for themselves, their students, or their profession. The use of a structured dialogue format provides an effective technique for managing the discussion and maintaining its focus. This protocol allows participants to look at data with new eyes, and ends with possible implications, next steps, and strategies.
Deep Needs and Assets Assessment
Transformational Community Schools build their work by always: seeing the system; building goals from a root cause analysis; developing their efforts both inside and outside the school building; working at the pace of relationships; and authentically centering equity and racial justice. Central to this effort is a Needs and Assets Assessment (NAA) reflecting these practices.
Transformational Needs and Assets Assessment
Transformational Community Schools build their work by always: seeing the system, building goals from a root cause analysis, developing their efforts both inside and outside the school building, working at the pace of relationships, and authentically centering equity and racial justice.
UCLA Community School: Celebrating Language and Culture
Language and culture are central to learning and human development, as they shape the ways in which we all learn and grow together. Individuals learn as members of a community that values their participation and is respectful, productive, and inclusive.
Community-Based Learning Guide
Community-based learning draws from the cultural wealth, funds of knowledge, and indigenous ways of knowing of students, families, and educators to cultivate responsive classrooms that foster a deep sense of belonging.
Equity in Student-Centered Learning Design
This guide is designed to help you and your team collaboratively design and implement learning that equitably honors the unique assets and needs of your students.
Using Performance Assessments to Support Student Learning: How District Initiatives Can Make a Difference
In this study, we investigated how districts and schools can build systems and structures for developing and implementing performance assessment initiatives across multiple sites.
NEA: Community Schools Strategy, School Level Implementation
This one-page roadmap outlines the school-level implementation of the community schools strategy, providing interest holders with a clear overview of the process at the site level.